


with care and courage building me

by mothicalcreatures (laelreenia)



Series: A 19th Century Man’s Opinions on the 21st Century [1]
Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, M/M, Time Travel Fix-It, trpw2019, well managed mental health issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-10
Updated: 2019-11-10
Packaged: 2021-01-26 13:48:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21375136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laelreenia/pseuds/mothicalcreatures
Summary: John Irving owned a hand-made furniture and antique furniture refurbishment store in 2019 and made a fair penny doing it. It was nothing like how he’d imagined his life to turn out when he’d set sail for the Arctic in1845,but he was not going to question the divine intervention that had kept him alive.
Relationships: Thomas Hartnell/Lt John Irving
Series: A 19th Century Man’s Opinions on the 21st Century [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1540969
Comments: 6
Kudos: 25
Collections: The Terror Rarepair Week 2019





	with care and courage building me

**Author's Note:**

> This actually takes place within a larger Time Travel AU, in which the conceit is Fitzjames running a "historical fiction" blog, which is really just a thinly veiled online journal. However, that's turned out to be quite a long endeavor, and as it's Fitzier centric Tartnell and Irving are only supporting characters and this fic idea wouldn't leave me alone.
> 
> That said, I made sure that there was no prior knowledge of the bigger AU fic needed to enjoy this fic, because it's not going to be going up anytime soon.
> 
> The title comes from the poem [ Affliction (IV) by George Herbert ](http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/herbert/affliction4.htm)

Irving ran his hand anxiously over the top of the table he was currently sanding in his workshop and he had to keep himself from getting up to check the time on his phone which was currently sitting on top of his tool cabinet.

Tom wasn’t late. Well, no later than usual, but John always worried when Tom’s travel plans didn’t turn out well and they rarely did. John had mentioned when Tom had texted him to say he’d be late, that perhaps it was time for Tom to find a new job, one that would pay him a fair wage that covered the travel costs necessary to do his job as a _travel_ writer. Or at the very least, he should ask for a raise.

Tom had replied saying he’d investigate his options, and Irving had said no more. But he’d taken his anxieties out on the table in front of him and here they were.

John Irving owned a hand-made furniture and antique furniture refurbishment store in 2019 and made a fair penny doing it. It was nothing like how he’d imagined his life to turn out when he’d set sail for the Arctic in _1845, _but he was not going to question the divine intervention that had kept him alive. (He didn’t see how it could have been anything else.)

He’d had a bit of a wobbly start, all the survivors had. But once he’d gotten his bearings and figured out how best to support himself, he’d settled down into quiet life in Scotland with Tom Hartnell, another unexpected development of the expedition.It was a nice quiet life, undisturbed, but it was also lonely. Tom was good company, when he was around, and the modern inventions of phones and the internet made keeping in touch all the easier when he was away, but melancholy was persistent.

Depression, was the proper term for it these days, he’d learned. He didn’t quite remember how the conversation had come up, it likely something to do with finishing a commission late because he’d felt so poorly, but one of his customers had mentioned her work as a psychologist and suggested that perhaps John should seek help if his moods were impacting his ability to work. He hadn’t really expected the little white pills he’d been prescribed to really help, and they didn’t right away, but the doctor had assured him it took time and continued effort, and within just a few months, John had found himself feeling better than he had in a good long while.

He almost didn’t notice it at first, because it didn’t fix things _entirely_, but he had a more logical grip on his emotions now. Between that and the other ways he’d found, often with Tom’s help, to care for himself, he was doing much better. Tom had come home from one of his early trips with a skittish old calico cat and a heavy weighted blanket, and declared that if he was going to be traveling a lot John needed things to keep himself from worrying too much while he was gone and that Goodsir had said that weighted blankets and animals could help with stress. John had been skeptical at first, but having an animal to care for had helped motivate John to be up and about at regular hours and the blanket really did help him relax to sleep (especially with the added benefit of a warm cat on his chest as well).

John was happy, really, truly happy, in the life he’d created for himself.

Inside the main house, he heard a door bang, followed by a shout of “I brought dinner!”

John smiled. He had worried to himself that the relationship that had developed between Tom and himself wouldn’t last outside of the Arctic. It had been a very tender and frightening thing for John for some time, but now it felt almost natural. And that was something wondrous about modern times as well; the overwhelming, not only acknowledgment, but celebration, of same sex love. The Church of Scotland didn’t allow for same sex marriages yet, but according to whathe’d read online, an announcement on that should be coming soon. It was still legal, whether the church would perform them or not. 

John got up from his work bench, tidying the surrounding area just a bit, and removing his apron before he leaving to workshop to welcome Tom home.

“You are covered in saw dust,” was Tom’s greeting, when Irving stepped into the kitchen.

He looked down at himself. “I wore my apron, but I was sanding a piece and it gets everywhere no matter what I do.”

Tom laughed and moved across the room to embrace John. “I’m glad to be home. I missed you.”

“I missed you too,” John said, before kissing Tom carefully on the cheek.

It still felt daring to be so indiscrete. Yes, they were in their own home, but the kitchen had a window that faced the street. Anyone walking by could have seen them, but that was fine. No one was lashed or sent to prison for sodomy anymore, at least not in Scotland.

Tom was grinning when he pulled back. “I got dinner from that little Polish place that opened up in the town over a few months ago. I told James about it and the first thing he asked was if it was good. He was crushed when I told him we hadn’t been yet.”

“I figured if we didn’t like it, we were better off eating it at home,” Tom continued. “I tried to go for things that seemed pretty safe.”

“If it’s really horrible we can make something else,” John said. “But I’m glad you got it. I doubt I’d try terribly many new things if you didn’t insist.”

As they started setting up to eat, Tom portioning out the food onto plates at the counter while John set the table, John’s mind drifted back to some of what he’d been thinking about earlier, in regard to the present day acceptance of homosexuality. When he’d first starting learning about the modern day attitudes, the first thing he’d felt had been relief followed almost immediately by terrible guilt.

“Do you think… Do you think I made the right choice? Reacting to Hickey the way I did?” He’d discussed the matter with Tom before, but not it particular depth. It wasn’t something Irving liked to revisit.

Tom stopped in the middle of portioning out some sort of sausage and potato dish onto a plate. “He tried to _kill_ you. I think your reaction was perfectly normal given the circumstances.”

John shook his head. “I meant before that, when I… after I discovered him and Gibson.”

“I think you acted the best you could with the information you had,” Tom said. “A lesser man would have informed Captain Crozier immediately.”

John supposed that was true. He didn’t even speak to either of them about it until Gibson approached _him._

“I guess I can’t help but think, knowing what I do now… If I’d been more understanding, maybe some things could have been avoided, I don’t know.”

“I don’t know that thinking like that’s going to do you any good,” Tom said, finally finishing plating the food. “There’s no more use trying to look at our lives in the 1840s with 21st century values than there is trying to live with the values of the 1840s today.”

John sighed, accepting one of the plates from Tom as Tom joined him at the kitchen table. “I suppose you are right there.”

He couldn’t change the past, and he was happy now in the present. He had Tom and a job he liked in a quiet town and friends who he could keep in touch with easily without the constant worry of a letter being lost in the post.

“Did you know that Capt- that Francis and James are getting married?”

John very nearly lost the food on he’d picked up on his fork. “No, I hadn’t heard… when did you hear this?”

“James… texted me. Apparently they’d been talking about it for awhile. It’s just going to be a quiet little thing, but they were wondering if we would want to come down for it. I said yes for both of us, I hope that wasn’t overstepping.”

“It wasn’t,” John assured him. “I’m happy for them.”

John had known that Francis and James were a couple, they made no secret of it among their friends now that it was safe to do so, but it had never occurred to him that they might get married. He hadn’t really thought about any of them getting married…

“Tom would you marry me?”

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. John's weighted blanket + cat combo is how I fall asleep every night, there is nothing better in the world.
> 
> 2\. John's reference to the Church of Scotland having something about same-sex marriage soon, is that [in 2018, the church created a committee to draft a church law on same-sex marriage and told them to report back in 2020.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presbyterianism_and_homosexuality#Church_of_Scotland)
> 
> 3\. The real John Irving did actually make his own furniture when he lived in Australia.


End file.
